Avatar: Fire and Ash

• Directed by James Cameron
• December 1, 2025 (Dolby Theatre) / December 19, 2025 (US)

The inhabitants of Pandora face the combined threat of the human RDA forces and a Na’vi clan of raiders called the Mangkwan.

When I began watching Avatar: Fire and Ash I realized I was often drawing a blank on Avatar: The Way of the Water yet I was left with a sense of having seen this all before in random scenes. Some of it is because events of Fire start shortly after Water but also because much of this may be a glossy rehash of the predecessor.

Our story opens with Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) diving an RDA wreck gathering whatever he can in prep for the enemy’s inevitable return. Bafflingly Tonowari (Cliff Curtis), Chief of the Metkayina, is against it because the planet spirit Eywa will help them. When has Eywa been actively involved in its own preservation? Jake also gets chastised for spreading dangerous ideas so groupthink appears to be the rule among the Metkayina. As presented it is conflict to have conflict over differing POVs which is an indication of something with Cameron at this stage in his career.

At this point James Cameron, given the bank made on the Avatar films, has not heard “No” in some time. “No” forces creative decisions and choices on what is important. “No” makes you question character actions and see that you are using contrivance rather than intelligence to get to the next part. Cameron is no longer stopped by anyone and can put whatever he wants up no matter how shallow or trite or unnecessary dragging this movie out into three long hours.

He keeps just about everything in a film that is focused more on the kids and being a teen drama that is about the adults in a more mature and thoughtful story despite a budget approaching $400 million. You can see stuff coming a mile away mostly because it suddenly becomes very important before it becomes a problem in the story.

Last movie Spider (Jack Champion) ran around for the entirety of the film with nary a problem concerning his mask. Here the battery dies every few minutes (per the run of Fire) so he must be taken back to the human base or die. Naturally there is an attack, everybody gets separated, and Spider’s breather fails again before Eywa takes a random interest in him and gives the teenager a means to survive easily. Clearly Eywa is a moron because you just handed the invasive species a reason to stay and a way to survive. That is some serious wisdumb for the great Eywa to dispence.

In Avatar the humans came to strip-mine Pandora. In Water they arrived to get space whale brain jelly. Now they have come to colonize a large moon where everything, even the air, is hostile to humans. With all the fluff and extraneous goings-on in this film, you would think that Cameron could find maybe one to five minutes to explain why Pandora is such must to colonize when the environment is unbreathable and all lifeforms are hostile to anybody that’s not from there. Not only that but in two previous instances the dominant intelligent species of the planet defeated humanity. In one instance it pushed them off the planet for a while. Is this the only planet humanity knows of or is okay in any measure to people? The world may never know because no character ever says.

A new threat introduced is the raiding Mangkwan led by Varang (Oona Chaplin) whose people were devasted by a volcanic eruption from which Eywa gave them no respite despite their prayers and pleading. She took the alien bull by the horns and turned her people into raiders rather than find someplace less ashy to live. Sully could move his tribe but she could not? Makes sense.

Stupid things happen throughout to make the movie happen. Jake for example gets caught but can escape because an angry scientist can sneak into a secure area and easily gain access to heavy machinery to sheer the top off Jake’s holding cell which is conveniently in a very open area. Spider implies kids are there so no security? Why keep a prisoner in an unsecured open area?

As I have all but said there is an accidental message in this and that this Eywa does not care about itself or those living on it. It will do something only when pushed and prodded or just downright harangued. It is indifferent to suffering. Just ask the character of Varang.

Despite the supposed deep connection with the planets and the creatures, the Na’vi are more than willing to send random animals summoned by the planet being to die as cannon fodder in their battle to drive away humans. Never take a moment to be concerned or show concern. 

Ash has a significantly broad cast of inconsequential characters in a film that feels like a rehash of the second. What exactly changes for their situation from the beginning to the end? Humans are still coming and they are not even pushed back a little bit. No strong character growth and no real change in their lives. It’s very by the numbers becoming very generic. We have the grand rally speech and the teenage kids and a battle of primitives-versus-advanced technology.

Cameron and company drive home how polluted Earth is to make inevitable humanity’s arrival. By extension it says all humans are polluting monsters and deserve to die. I get not wanting humans to take over Pandora, but it never takes a deeper look at humanity trying to stave off its extinction. They can certainly be wrong for trying to take over Pandora but outright evil?

Colonel Miles Quaritch is back once again and Stephen Lang is perhaps the standout performance of the movie. He grows a little bit as a character moving beyond military baddy. He gives Quaritch a big and bold personality that makes him THE threat and not just one of the threats.

I just can’t get over how much Lang shines here in comparison to everybody else. The man has always been good, but he outshines everyone here. In a film of shallow characters he becomes magnetic and you want him to win because at least he’s interesting. There is a previously missing complexity in the character as he struggles to connect with his son Spider and gets a bit of a thing going with Varang. Lang even adds a hint of respect for Sully to the character.

Interacting with CGI environments, Champion-as-Spider really stands out. He is wooden even amongst the fakery-at least for a film with a massive budget. For the CW he might shine as mysterious heartthrob new to town. It often becomes painfully obvious he is moving around amongst nothing that is there. Dramatic close shots of Na’vi look fake. The quality of life that can be found in a human being under prosthetics is missing from the CGI iterations of the actors. It makes them difficult to take seriously. You are frequently reminded it is high quality animation.

The children play a very heavy role in this often being the driver of events. Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) is not only in a teen romance with Spider but is the key to victory if only she could talk to Eywa who has cut her off until it decides not to anymore for reasons. Spider gets a special mycelium growth that allows him to breathe regular and Pandora air. The kids regularly take actions and dress down the adults who acquiesce.

The most realistic thing in this movie is that native tribes in all situations across all of human history have sided with the outside force if they see a benefit in it for them. Here it’s because evil Varang can get guns to become a bigger power among her people. No veiled commentary there. No figurative whiffle bat to the head in delivering a message like the rest of the movie. In a message movie, even a superficial one, ignoring that screams of offending people.

Avatar: Fire and Ash is a visually great film, but ultimately nothing special. It goes on too long with a rehash of the previous story as a teen drama with a massive budget.